Going Back Home
by kelsey01
Summary: Tim Shepard drove out of Tulsa and swore he'd never return, but 14 years later a phone call brings him back to face the past.
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: S E Hinton owns The Outsiders

**August 1984**

Tim Shepard stood with his feet apart, fists up. The bare bulb overhead cast a circle of light around him. Outside the carport was a sea of darkness. inside him was the stillness he always felt before a fight.

A breeze blew through the open sides, hot and gritty. It was all fucking dust out here, dust and heat and the smell of oil. He never did get used to any of it.

"Ready?"

He pumped his arms. Curled his hands in the gloves.

"Ready, dad."

Jay shuffled in front of him, his own fists up, his shadow moving across Tim's.

Tim stood still and let him get close. He used too much energy dancing around, thought he was fucking Ali. He came in and Tim swung and he ducked away fast.

"Try and hit me, come on," Tim said.

Jay grinned a little and shook his head. He raised his gloved hand up to wipe his mouth across his arm.

Then he was right in front of Tim, fist snaking forward. It bounced off against Tim's gloves.

Jay backed away again and Tim narrowed his eyes in disapproval.

"That shit might work on your school friends."

His son was fourteen, nearly as tall as him, as restless as Tim remembered ever being.

But Tim could still see the sleepless baby who'd screamed against his shoulder through those dark nights, the boy who'd waited for him to come home with drilled down fear in his eyes. His son was everything at once to him, a baby, a child, nearly a man.

From the corner of his eyes he saw the dark figure appear at the edge of the carport.

"What you want, Jesse?"

His youngest son came further in.

"Phone, dad."

"Take a message."

Jay's gaze flickered, following his brother as he went back up to the house.

Tim aimed a punch for his jaw, pulled it back at the last second. Jay rocked on his feet even so. Shook his head and blinked and then looked at Tim with accusing eyes.

"Pay attention," Tim said. His son was going to know how to take care of himself. Pity wouldn't do him any good.

"Thought you'd stopped," Jay said.

"Was I on the fucking ground?"

"I wish you were!"

Tim dropped his guard and stepped forward.

"Come on and try," he said.

He moved back from another blow. Jay swung again, frustration making him sloppy.

"You know you look where you're gonna go every time you move?" Tim asked him. "Keep your plans in here. Surprise me."

He tapped a glove against his own head.

Jay nodded a little, watching him closely. Tim never held his attention so much as when they sparred in the evenings.

Tim moved forward again and Jay took a swing. It was wide and Tim dodged it without real effort. He didn't see Jay's left coming, only felt it knock his jaw sideways.

It was a good hit. Tim felt the strength in it, admired the clean and fast move even as he waited for the bright pain to die down. The darkness outside pulsed in and out again. For a terrible moment the ground rolled under him and he thought he might have to put a hand on the wall for support.

"Not bad," Tim said. Jay smiled.

Tim had twenty years on the boy and he felt every single one of them. He felt every cigarette smoked down to the butt, every empty glass slammed back on the bar for another, every long day he'd worked in the oil fields and came home tired to the bone.

But still when Jay sidled up to him, feigned a punch in under his ribs and asked with a grin, "You wanna go, dad?" he nodded. Threw back the beer, stubbed out the cigarette, shook off the tired haze of work and followed his boy out the door.

"Dad?"

Jesse was back, coming further into the garage.

"She wants to talk to you, says she's your sister."

The word sounded strange in his son's mouth.

Tim's sister. That part of him he'd left behind a long time ago. The Tim who was a big brother, a gang leader, a Tulsa hood.

He let his hands drop, forgetting whatever lesson it was he'd come out to teach. His boys stood in the light before him. Dark haired and blue eyed, two brothers who made his heart ache in all kinds of ways.

"So what should I tell her?" Jesse asked. He was three years younger than Jay, a whole lot more innocent.

"I'll take it," Tim said.

He ducked his head down to pull the Velcro off a glove with his teeth.

Jay came to stand in front of him and put his hands out for Tim to take his gloves off. Tim could hear his light, even breaths and tried to slow his own.

"I'm gonna have you one day," Jay said, glancing up at him.

He damn near had. Tim would never tell him that.

"Well you better start learning boy, 'cause I ain't going to start forgetting anything."

"Alzheimer's will get you soon enough," Jay murmured.

Tim bit back a smirk and cuffed his son across the ear instead.

"Ow, dad."

"Learn not to run your mouth for a start."

Tim handed him the gloves and patted the side of his head.

One day but not this day. It was a strange kind of pride, of knowing his sons would overtake him. It was their time coming and his was already behind him.

"That a night for you, dad?"

Jay was smiling again, cocky as only an untested boy could be.

"That's your night. Go in and get in the shower."

Jay rolled his eyes but he turned to go without protest. Not this night.

He walked ahead of Tim across the bare yard. He stopped on the porch, outlined against the light from the kitchen windows.

"Wonder what your sister wants?"

They knew his family never called. Once a year on Christmas Eve he downed a few bottles and phoned Angela after the boys were asleep, so late he figured she'd be asleep too yet always she answered.

The details of her life were updated to him in twelve month intervals. That asshole he'd seen her wed to was in jail and then he was out. He had a job and he lost it and he was in jail again. She had a kid, another, and another. He didn't try and remember their names or any other thing.

She told him which boys from those old days were still drinking in the bar where she worked, who was married and who was divorced, who'd left town and who was jailed.

She updated him on a life that was nothing but the dust that had risen up behind his car as he drove out of Tulsa, and still he phoned. She wrote him once when she moved house with the new number, but she never phoned him. Tim knew that someone must be dead if she was calling.

Jesse was sitting at the kitchen table with a bowl of cereal even though he'd eaten a steak dinner not four hours earlier.

Tim was sure he never ate as much as his own sons did when he was coming up. When the memories of those days came winding back like they sometimes did, mostly he remembered the twist of hunger in his belly as he walked the streets.

Tim lit up a cigarette and stuck it in his mouth and picked up the phone. He imagined the line that stretched all the way from Angela's house on the North side to his house in Odessa, Texas.

A chain that wound through all his days, that would be there holding him to Tulsa no matter how far he went.

"Hey," he said, moving to stand against the door frame. He blew smoke out at the starry sky.

"Tim, how are you?"

Angela sounded the same as she ever did, as if it was nothing out of the ordinary for her to call him near ten on a Thursday night.

"Good," he said. "How are you? How's the kids?"

He took another drag on his cigarette, held it while he waited for her answer.

"They're driving me crazy! How are your boys?"

"They're doing alright. They keep out of trouble."

"Can't hope for more than that," she said, her tone softer for a moment.

He and Angel had seen too much that could never be undone.

"Heard anything from Maria lately?" she asked.

"She sent 'em a Christmas card. Come in January."

Tim glanced back at the table. Jesse was pushing his spoon around the plate, chasing up the last of the milk. If he was hurt by the talk of his mother he didn't show it, he never did. Jesse was the kid he couldn't read.

Angela sniffed. "I can't believe that bitch. She's no kind of mother."

Same thing she'd said every year since the December of 1978, the Christmas Eve phone call when Tim had told her that five months earlier he'd come home late from work to find the boys sitting alone in front of the TV and Maria long gone.

"Mom's friend came and picked her up," Jay had told him, but for some reason Tim hadn't repeated that part to Angela. His sons all knowing eyes had twisted him with guilt, in some better life he would have never understood these things.

"Well it's her loss," Tim said.

She was silent on the other end. He could hear the spark and quick breath of her lighting up a cigarette. Jay came out from the shower and walked his usual line straight to the fridge. He got the milk out and drank from the bottle, standing in front of the open door.

"So what I got to tell you," Angela said, "Our mom's real sick, Tim."

They never talked about their mother. Tim never asked.

"That so?" he said, snapping his fingers at Jay and indicating for him to get a beer out.

"A couple months back she started losing weight. It's not like she was big to start with, and soon enough she nothing but skin and bone. I kept telling her she had to go the doctor but you know what she's like."

She paused so Tim said "yeah" into the silence. He knew what she was like.

He popped the lid off the beer and took a drink. Never should have given Angela his number.

"Then she couldn't eat, couldn't keep anything down. Finally went to the doctor and its cancer, stomach cancer."

"Shit" said Tim. He wondered if that was something that could be fixed. Sometimes no medicine could heal you. Sometimes the doctor only shook his head and said it was too late, nothing could be done.

"She's in hospital now. I mean, they don't think she's going to come out."

Her voice wavered. His little sister crying on the phone all those miles away.

"Look, I'll send you out some money. I'll get to the bank tomorrow."

"Hey fuck you," Angela said, the hardness back in her tone. "She's your mother too."

Jay was leaning against the bench now, watching Tim.

"It's been a lot of years, Angel."

When he left he knew he was never coming back. He drove away so early in the morning no one was awake to watch him go, Maria beside him and the baby asleep in the back.

"She's dying Tim. She's asking for you."

Her words dropped off.

Tim didn't have to look on a map to figure how many miles were between them. He could leave in the morning and be there Friday evening. Visit Angela and his mother Saturday morning and drive through the afternoon and night back to Texas.

"I'll call you when I get in," he told Angela, before he could give it too much thought. If he did he'd know all the reasons it was a shitty idea.

He hung up before she could say anything else.

"What'd she want?" Jay asked.

He was always curious about the place where he'd been born, the family he'd never known. The life Tim had left behind so that Jay could live a different one.

"Going to take a drive to Tulsa tomorrow," he told them.

"That's where you were born?" Jesse asked.

"It is."

"How come?" Jay asked. "How long for?"

"Just the weekend."

Jay frowned, chewed his lip. Tim could see him considering a weekend spent driving to the place of his birth against a weekend spent with his girlfriend.

"I'll stay here, make sure no one robs us," he said, his eyes brightening at the prospect.

"You're coming," Tim said.

Jay sulked and slumped back against the kitchen bench.

Tim never said a thing he didn't mean, he never went back on something he'd said. The boys knew it wasn't worth arguing with him when he laid down the law.

He aimed his gaze at Jesse where he sat at the table.

"You get to bed now."

Jesse nodded and got up, turned into Tim and leaned against him. Tim squeezed his shoulder and then gave him a gentle push toward the hallway. He never was any good at the shit that wasn't issuing orders and teaching them how to throw a punch.

He turned to Jay who was still leaning against the bench.

"Wash up these dishes then you get some sleep too. We'll head off early tomorrow."

Growing up Tim would have no sooner thought to wash dishes than put on his mother's lipstick. It was for a woman to do.

But after Maria left he realized if he didn't do it no one would. He saw a cockroach run across the stack of dirty plates on the bench one day so he filled the sink with hot water. Jesse wet his bed so he had to strip off the sheets, figure out how to run the washing machine.

Life taught him what no wife or mother or sister ever could have.

"You didn't say why we going?"

"My mother's sick," he said. "Going to see her before she passes."

Jay took the news without reaction. Grandmother was only a word to him after all.

"I got to call Connie first, I told her I was going to meet her before school tomorrow. Ok?"

"Yeah."

Jay picked the entire phone up off the bench and started down the hallway with it. When he spoke to his girlfriend he always dragged it all the way down to his bedroom, as far as the cord would reach. Lucky for him the place wasn't big.

But he stopped and turned back in the hallway, stood there holding the phone.

"You alright, dad?"

A strange look on his face. As if for a moment he thought of Tim as his equal, someone who had a mother too, someone who might feel pain.

"Sure," Tim said. "You got five minutes, then get onto those dishes."

If his son was going to start feeling sorry for him Tim would make sure it didn't last.

"What have we got for anyone to steal anyway?" he added as Jay went down to his room.

He walked out to the porch again. Lit up another cigarette and stared across the quiet street. He tried to shove back down the memories crawling up. Home was calling.

* * *

This is just my take on a possible future for Tim. Any comments welcome!


	2. Chapter 2

Disclaimer: S E Hinton owns The Outsiders.

* * *

Tim could still remember the walk across the gravel parking lot with his knife in his hand. The brick toilet block lit up by fluorescent light. The row of doors and the music from the bar fading away behind him. Everything inside him drilled down to a single focus.

He walked up to the last door, raised a booted foot and kicked just below the lock. The door swung open.

Darren Walker turned around from the toilet with his jeans still hanging open. His face was bright with surprise and then he laughed and there was no surprise anymore.

"Tim," he said, and he did his jeans up and pulled a packet of cigarettes out. Studied slowness in his movements. He stuck one in his mouth and then he looked at Tim.

"That your last request?" Tim asked.

"How about a light?"

Tim held one out. Darren reached his hand past the outstretched knife to take it.

He lit up and for a moment they stared at each other through the hard light.

"Who's gonna take the fall for you now?" Tim asked him.

Darren chuckled and stuck the cigarette back in his mouth, he strutted forward with his arms out from his side, throat and chest and belly all on offer.

"Come on then," he said.

That was two days before he left Tulsa. Fourteen years ago and he could still remember the sound of them both breathing in that confined space. Smell the piss soaked concrete floor and read the graffiti that had been scrawled on the walls; River Kings.

It was something he hadn't thought of in so long, so many years, and yet there it was as clear in his mind as if it were yesterday.

The sun was still low in the sky, the street in shadow. He leaned against the side of the car, dragging on his smoke.

It was a familiar position, the last cigarette before getting in the car to drive into the rising sun. When he left Tulsa he drove straight across the country to Portland, where Maria's uncle had a job on offer. When the work there dried up they loaded the car again and went down to California. Maria left while they were in Los Angeles, but Tim kept going, moving on.

The Impala was the same car he'd driven out of Tulsa in, though over the years he'd dropped a new engine in, recovered the seats, cut out all the rust and re-sprayed it. The car probably felt like more of a home to his boys than any of the parade of houses they'd lived in.

The door opened and Jay came out, swinging a backpack from one hand and rubbing his eyes with the other. Jesse pushed in behind him and they jostled each other on the porch. Jesse was hopelessly outmatched by his bigger brother, but he stuck a foot out and just about dropped Jay down the steps.

Tim flinched a little, for a second seeing a vision of his sons face smashing into the concrete slab below. But Jay caught himself, looking abruptly awake. He grabbed Jesse and swung him over one shoulder, feigned dropping him on his head before dumping him down onto the grass.

Tim remembered being young when he watched them. Not those cold memories he tried to shove away, but the feeling he'd once had of being at the centre of the world. He remembered his own little brother following him off their mother's porch and into days seeming full of possibility.

"Come on now," he said to his sons as they tussled on the lawn, slapping his palm against the roof of the car. They broke apart, Jay stopped to pick his bag up and Jesse made a dash for the passenger seat.

"Give it up already," Jay sighed, yanking his brother back by his collar in a swift and weary move. He pushed Jesse toward the backseat and pulled the door open.

"Dad!" Jesse protested, looking to Tim for help. "I never get to sit up front!"

Tim usually left them to it, but maybe the lingering nostalgia made him soft. He cupped a hand around Jesse's neck and pulled him to the driver's door.

"Get in," he said, and Jesse grinned and scooted across the bench seat to the middle.

Jay shifted against the window, looking discontent at having to share his spot.

Tim got in beside Jesse and turned the car on. He sat in silence listening to the rumble of the engine, looking out to the haze of the horizon. This day felt like it had always been inevitable. A part of him looked forward to seeing his sister again. But thinking of her always made him feel like he'd been punched through the guts. He could never see his brother again, and the thought still had the power to wound every time.

"Dad?" Jay asked. "Are we going?"

Jay had cried so incessantly at Curly's funeral that Tim picked him up and walked out with him. Someone tried to take the baby for him and he pushed past them. His son was just one month old, his brother not even eighteen. Tim was glad for a reason to leave. He walked across the damp grass and into the cemetery; he wrapped his jacket around the baby in the misty cold.

He was a bundle of warmth against Tim's chest. Tim never wanted him. He never wanted to be a father. But his son pressed against the empty place inside him. Love drove down in him as he stood outside the church, staring at the hole cut into the ground where Curly would be laid after the service.

If he could have just one wish, he would raise his brother up all over again, and he would do it right.

XXX

He drove the long straight roads, looking for something he knew. He'd spent too many years trying to forget all this.

"You lost?" Jay asked. Little shit never missed a beat.

"Just looking for someplace to stay," Tim said.

Jesse had climbed into the back again after lunch to lie down and sleep across the seats. Jay never slept in the car. Never stopped watching Tim, watching to see where he was taking them.

Things were starting to look familiar. He knew the park with the fountain in it. A kid died there a long time back. About the same time Dallas died, and Dally's buddy whose name he couldn't remember. Sometimes it seemed like hardly anyone got out alive from those days.

You should be glad I took you out of here he could have told Jay. He nearly told his son about the boy dying in the park, but then the park was behind them again and the moment past.

"Where did you live?" Jay asked.

"We'll pass it in a minute."

He slowed down at another familiar sight. Buck's old place. The two story house was brightly painted; the parking lot where he'd once sat in his car with Maria while she told him she was pregnant was paved over and bordered with gardens.

"This is where I used to hang out."

Jay flicked a finger against the window.

"Daisy's Tea and Fine Cakes," he read from the sign. "Look's wild, dad."

"It's changed some," Tim said.

"So what'd you do there?"

He remembered the days when the car park would have been full of cars and girls and swaggering boys, when he couldn't have walked three steps inside without someone wanting to shake his hand, give him a drink, ask or offer a favour.

"Played pool, listened to music, usual stuff."

"And drank tea?"

Jay looked over at him, smirking a little, waiting.

"Nah, the coffee was bad enough," Tim said.

XXX

Tim found a hotel closer to downtown. He checked in and took a key up to the first level. The metal steps clattered under their feet. Behind him the boys shoved at each other.

They were irritable after the drive, restless from being stuck in the car.

The hotel room was tidy and quiet. There was a double bed in the main room and another bedroom with a single bed.

"You two can share" Tim told the boys, pointing them at the double bed.

Jay tossed his bag down and sighed.

"Man, I hope you don't piss the bed still, Jess."

"Shut up! You better not piss your pants thinking about your girlfriend."

"Least I got one to think about."

Tim flexed his hands. The walls of the room felt too close. He pulled the sliding door open and stepped out onto the narrow balcony.

He smoked two cigarettes one after the other and looked over the street they were on. At the corner on the end was a bar, neon sign flashing in the dusk. He watched it for a while but there was no sign of life coming in or out. Beside it was an arcade parlour, a couple of boys with spiked hair smoked outside.

He stubbed the butt out in a dead looking pot plant and went back inside. The boys were lying on the bed, watching TV in the fading light.

Tim sat down beside them and stared at the TV for a while. Jay and Jesse seemed lulled by it, but he felt hemmed in by the sound of tinny laughter and the warm darkness of the room and the streets of Tulsa outside.

"You gonna call your sister?" Jay asked.

"Tomorrow," Tim said. "We'll go see her in the morning."

"Reckon she'll be surprised you came?"

"She knew I would," Tim said. If there was one thing he did, he kept his word.

"It's gonna be weird meeting them," Jesse said, his words muffled by the pillow he had buried his face in. He looked half asleep already. Jay had his chin propped in his hands, only a shade more upright than his brother.

Tim stood up again, looked down at Jay.

"I'm gonna head out for an hour. You watch your brother, don't go nowhere."

"Where would I go?" Jay asked, not turning from the TV. Obviously he hadn't spotted the arcade outside.

Tim pulled the curtains across the glass doors.

"Where are you going?" Jesse asked.

His sons were the only people he'd ever felt obliged to answer to.

"Going for a drink. I'll be right across the road."

"Can you leave us money for the snack machine? I'm starving and there ain't nothing but milk and peanuts in here."

The snack machine was down in the reception, loaded with chips and chocolate bars.

Tim dug in his pocket for coins and tossed a handful at Jay.

"For both of you," he said.

"Sure," Jay said, scooping up the money.

He picked out a dime and flicked it across the bed to Jesse.

"Here's yours."

"You have to share, Jay!"

"You're a little runt still, you don't need much."

Tim dropped his hand down on Jay's shoulders, dug his fingers in.

"Be good to your brother, you hear me?"

Jay squirmed away from him.

"I'm just kidding around. Here, you pussy."

He shoved more money toward Jesse.

Tim stared down at them, the two dark heads, Jays arms folded in front of him ropey with new muscle. He was too young to understand how long life was, how many years there were to carry regrets.

Outside the last of the sun was gone. He stood in the white light of a street lamp and lit a cigarette. Energy was running through him.

This was what really felt like coming home. The dark streets, the glow of headlights, hard looks from boys lurking against doorways.

He pushed through the door of the bar and took a moment to scan the room. The dance floor was empty but for a couple slow dancing out of time to the fast music. He hated the shit they all played these days.

There were a few old guys lined up against the bar, a scattering of people sitting around tall tables near the back. Nothing looked like any kind of trouble.

The barmaid came over, slim and blond with a swaying walk that he watched all the way along the bar.

"What can I get you?" she asked, hand propped on her hip.

"Whisky, double," he said.

"Ice?"

He shook his head. She smiled, turned to get a glass. He looked at her ass in her tight black pants. Breasts curved against her black shirt.

She banged the glass down, gave him a long look as she poured his drink.

There was something familiar in the tilt of her head, the half smile she gave him.

"Tim Shepard," she said, snapping her fingers at him. "It's Tim Shepard."

"It is," he said, searching back for her name. He knew her.

She pushed his drink over, looking at him appraisingly.

"You're not as skinny as you used to be. I still see Angel sometimes. She didn't tell me you were back in town."

Dally's girl. She looked a little older, but as good as he remembered. It drove Dally wild when Sylvia flirted with him, and Tim grinned remembering. He used to think she enjoyed pissing Dally off just as much as he did.

"I just got in today," Tim said. "Only here for the weekend."

"Oh, Angel told me about your mom, I'm sorry Tim."

Tim drained his glass.

"How are you doing?"

"Working, as you can see," she said, turning away to serve a guy leaned up against the bar. Tim watched while she coldly stared down his attempts to flirt and used a thumb and forefinger to take the tip he aimed to stuff down her shirt.

"I work serving a bunch of assholes, as you can see," she added, not waiting until the guy was out of earshot.

"Looks like you can handle 'em," Tim said. She'd always been tough under her blond curls and fluttering eye lashes.

"What do you do with yourself these days, Timothy Shepard? Sell drugs? Steal cars?"

"I don't have time for any of that. I work and raise my boys, it's enough."

"I got three girls myself, Lord help me."

Tim smirked. "I'm glad I got boys. Least I know how they think."

Sylvia laughed. "Oh I understand how boys think just fine. That's why I worry."

"Their dad around?"

"Dad's," she said pointedly. "And no, they ain't. That's why I'm here."

She leaned into her hands, stared out across the dingy room.

"You ever look at your kids and worry you'll only see all your mistakes repeated over again?"

Tim had done more wrong then he cared to remember, but he never made the same mistake twice. He made his boys go to school every day, he gave them lunch money and chores and hot dinners, he didn't let Jay go to high school parties or hang in the streets after dark. He kept his sons in line like he should have kept his brother and sister in line.

"Every day," he said, shoving his glass over for another drink.

She filled it and poured herself a glass.

"I still think about Dally," she said. "And your brother, and Johnny. They were all just kids. None of it should have happened."

"This never should have happened," his mother had screamed at him, her hands gripping his jacket, shaking him back and forward as he stood frozen in front of her.

He tipped his drink back, feeling it burn hot inside him. He'd felt numb inside when Curly died. Like a sea of ice swept over him.

Sylvia tossed back her own drink. She grimaced and pushed her hair back from her face.

"But life goes on, right."

Tim nodded. He thought of his sons back in the hotel room, two boys who looked just like him, and who he hoped never saw what he had seen. Life went on until one day it didn't.

* * *

A/N: I tried to put a bit more back story in this chapter, since the first didn't explain much about Tim leaving home. It was hard to put it in while he was trying not to think about the past! Thanks for reading, any comments welcome.


	3. Chapter 3

S E Hinton owns The Outsiders

* * *

Tim opened his eyes to the yellow light of morning and half shut them again. The bed was rocking beneath him, his stomach lurching with it. The dry ache of a hangover rose up with consciousness. Jesse sat beside him, pushing his feet against the ground, the bed springs creaking as he bounced.

"Dad, you awake?"

"Cut that out," he said, putting a hand on the boy to still him. "What time is it?"

"It's nearly eight," Jesse said.

Tim rubbed a fist over his eyes. It was the latest he'd slept in years. Even on the days he didn't work he was usually awake at six, up and moving because he couldn't stay lying there staring at the ceiling.

"What'd you want?"

He pulled himself up in the narrow bed and yanked the curtain across the gap where the light glared from.

"Jay said I should wake you up and ask you to take us out to breakfast."

"How come Jay don't ask me himself?"

He grabbed his cigarettes of the bedside cabinet and shook one out.

"He said you won't be pissed at me for waking you up."

Tim was momentarily perturbed. He had no favoured son, only one he knew was strong willed enough to go up against him. The son he knew he had to be tough with.

"So can we go eat?" Jesse asked, bouncing him again.

"Go and tell Jay to make me a coffee first."

He pushed Jesse off the bed and gave him a pretend swat on the butt. He didn't hit his kids, not really, only the occasional backhand for Jay if he got too mouthy. His stepfather used to come after him with anything he could get his hands on and it never did him any good. Only filled him up with anger, only drove him out the house and set the desire to never be helpless to anyone in him.

He knew what not to do. He remembered every day what not to do.

He lit up the cigarette, reflecting for a moment on the cause of the pounding in his head. Sylvia had kept pouring drinks after he stopped paying, they'd leaned across the bar and talked about nights at Bucks and fights and arrests and drag races. They talked about those good old wild days when everyone was still alive.

When her shift finished he walked her out to her car. For a moment they'd stood there in silence and he felt all the memories pressed between them. Then she'd left to go home to her kids, and he'd gone back to the hotel room where his were. He'd pulled a blanket over them and flicked the TV off. Those days him and Sylvia remembered were long ago.

XXX

The sky was white and Tim squinted against the glare of the sun behind clouds. Heat pressed down over the city. Maybe he would take his boys to the river to swim later, down to the same banks him and his brother and sister had stood on so many afternoons and skipped stones, hunted for frogs and lizards, jumped under the cold green water.

That was even before the gang, when it was just his siblings trailing along behind him and their mother's directive to get out the house because her friend was coming over. If Tim had known she was to one day marry that friend and move him in he'd never have left. He'd have ruined every damn date she had.

"How about there?" Jay suggested, pointing to a diner.

"Guess it'll do," Tim said, pulling up outside. Through the big front window a group of teenage girls shared milkshakes, dressed in skimpy tops in the heat and giggling with their heads bent together.

Tim looked from them back to Jay and he shrugged.

"I'm sure the foods good too."

Tim shook his head and got out the car.

"Thought you loved Connie," Jesse said, a goad in his tone. "I heard you on the phone to her last night."

"I can still look," Jay said.

"Love?" Tim asked, slamming the door shut.

"Course I love her, she's my girlfriend," Jay said. As if love was something logical. Tim had married Maria less sure of love than their son was.

Tim led them to a seat at the back and took a chair against the wall. Some old habits never died.

He smoked and drank coffee while the boys ate, still tasting whisky in his throat.

"Dad are you gonna eat that?" Jay asked, eyeing up Tim's bacon and eggs.

Tim pushed the plate toward him.

"You have it," he said. "I'll be back in a minute."

He walked out to a pay phone on the corner.

"Yes?" Angela sounded harried; he could hear kids yelling in the back ground.

"Hey, Angel," he said. "Where do I go?"

"What do you mean where do you go? Joey, get down off that table and eat your breakfast!"

"The hospital. What ward?"

"You're in Tulsa?"

He heard the surprise in her voice.

"I said I would come."

There was a time she never would have doubted him.

"Visiting hours is from ten," she said, brisk again. "Room nine; go up to the Oncology ward. I'm going up about eleven so wait for me."

He looked back across the road to the diner.

"How is she?"

"Pretty drugged up, she gets confused sometimes. Take the boys though; she'll want to see them."

After all these years she still could follow his thinking. Unlike Curly who'd always seemed one step out of line.

"_I thought that's what you wanted Tim." _His brother's confused defence used to make him bristle in frustration, but remembering it now was a needle inside him. A pain he could never rub away but only try to ignore.

He didn't get lost driving to the hospital. It was one path burned into his memory. He remembered going up there to see Dally after he was hurt in the church fire, he'd stood up beside the window and stared over Tulsa spread below while they talked about the upcoming rumble.

Usually Tim didn't pay so much mind to the soc's; he was more preoccupied with keeping the Brumly Boys and River Kings off his turf than where the rich kids went and what they did.

But now everyone was calling this war, even Tim felt the anger stirring up as Dally talked about stomping the soc's. Those rich boys who'd had the easy life served up to them. There was no beginning or end to a fight with the soc's.

On the way to the hospital he slowed down at the house he and Maria had been living in when Jay was born.

It looked even smaller than he remembered. Four tight little rooms and a yard fenced in wire.

"How long did we live there?" Jay asked, not looking too impressed by his childhood home.

"Nearly a year," Tim said. "Left when you were 3 months old."

Less than twelve months and they were already two behind on rent. The electric bill was overdue; they were reaching to the back of the cupboard for the last tin of beans. He was married with a son of his own and he felt like a kid for the first time, a kid drowning in the adult world.

He had bills that couldn't be paid with a threat or a favour, his criminal record was a burden instead of something to boast about. What he'd once fought for he wanted only to forget.

At night he walked the lounge while the baby cried and Maria buried her head under her pillow, he'd stare out to the darkness seeing nothing that was really there, and wonder how he ran his life into this trap.

"How come we never came back here?" Jay asked.

Tim pulled away again, didn't give the little house another glance.

"Got offered a good job in Portland. Babies cost money and don't you forget it."

"I mean here, Tulsa. We never even visit your family."

"Wait until you meet my sister and mother. You won't wonder anymore."

Jay tapped his fingers against his lap, looking unsettled.

"But don't you miss them?"

What he missed was never coming back. His family when it was him and his mother and brother and sister.

"It's just the way life has gone," he said.

XXX

The hospital building cast a long shadow across the parking lot. Tim smoked as he walked across it, dragging hard on his cigarette. Jay and Jesse walked ahead of him and occasionally paused and waited for him to catch up. He wanted time to finish his smoke. He wanted time to roll on forward so he was back in Texas and past was behind him where it should be.

Up in the oncology ward he got a glimpse through doors into beds where humped figures lay under the white sheets. The bleach didn't cover up the smell of sickness. The ward was hushed but for a nurse pushing a trolley down the hallway ahead of them.

He stopped outside number nine, hesitated for a moment. She was pretty drugged, his sister had said. He wondered what she would say, what accusations she might throw at him.

There were two beds in the ward, but only one was occupied. His mother was an old woman, still black haired, but shrunken down, grey skinned and hollow cheeked. A tube dripping liquid snaked from her arm to an IV bag beside the bed.

Her eyes were half open but glazed over and aimed unseeing at the ceiling.

"Wow that's creepy," Jesse said in a hushed tone, half hiding behind Tim's back. Tim squeezed his arm in reprimand, but Jesse only pressed closer to him. Tim felt the same unease as his son. If it wasn't for the panting sound of her breaths he'd have thought he was looking at a dead woman.

"Hey, ma," he tried, leaning a little toward the bed.

He put his hand on her shoulder, recoiling inside at the feel of the bones under her skin. She moved jerkily, closing and opening her eyes, pulling her arms up toward her chest and the tubing with it.

Tim moved his hand back and waited while she blinked and looked around, seeming to try and pull her mind back from some far off place.

"Hey," he said again, and she turned her head in his direction.

"Tim?"

"Yeah, it's me."

He stood still while her gaze moved over him.

"You're all grown up," she said, her voice not much stronger than a whisper.

The words were sad, holding so many thoughts.

He nodded his head toward each of his sons.

"These are my boys, Jay and Jesse."

She looked at Jay, and he saw her flinch.

"Oh, Tim," she said.

Mostly he forgot how much Jay looked like Curly at the same age, but he saw it all over again in his mother's pained expression, the haunted look in her eyes as she stared at his son.

"You were a baby last I saw you," she said to Jay. Then she blinked hard and set her jaw.

"Tim, raise up this bed would you? That lever there."

"This?"

"Yes ... not so fast. That's enough. Not this much Tim, for goodness sake put it back down a little."

Tim could see Jay biting back a smile at him being ordered around by his mother. She looked more alive now, the same tight look on her mouth he remembered, and same demand in her tone when she spoke to him. The same old irritation stirred up in him, even now.

"So you've spoken to Angela I take it?" she asked, settling back against the pillow.

"Yeah, she called me a couple of day's back."

"So you thought you better come and make sure I really die?"

"Jesus, ma."

"It's a joke, Tim. Does your daddy joke around with you boys?"

Jesse shook his head a little.

"No, he never did have a sense of humour. Did you? Even as a kid you were always so damn serious."

Jay smirked and moved a little closer to the side of the bed. The boys looked more comfortable now she didn't appear one breath short of dying, though Jesse was still standing close to him.

"Was he good when he was a kid?" Jay asked. "Or did he get into trouble?"

He grinned at Tim, looked back to his grandmother hopefully.

"Was he good?" she repeated, looking amused. "Oh my Lord, boy, you have no idea."

"He doesn't tell me anythin,g" Jay said, giving Tim another look, this time without a smile.

"Come on," Tim said, frowning at his mother. He wasn't a kid any more Childhood had been only a fleeting moment in his life, over before he was really aware of it.

"How are you feeling anyway, mom? You in any pain?"

She picked at the blanket.

"I'm dying, honey. I feel like a dying person. Sometimes it hurts, mostly this does the job."

She raised her hand with the IV line.

"They give you all the good stuff at end. To think I've never even smoked a cigarette before."

Tim regretted asking. There never had been an easy conversation with his mother, not in all his life.

But then she reached out and put one thin hand on his arm, gripped it with more strength than he expected.

"It's good to see you, and the boys."

Her hand slid off him again. She sank into the pillow, as if it had used the last of her strength.

"They seem like good boys. You must be proud."

Her voice was fading, her eyes stayed closed for several seconds when she blinked.

Tim thought of everything she wasn't saying. The last time they'd been in the same room her accusations had rained down on him and he'd stood there and said nothing in his own defence, because he had none.

"That's right," he said.

"I'm just so tired," she said, the words a sigh.

"We'll let you get some rest," he said.

He lowered the bed again for her and went back out to the hallway with Jay and Jesse behind him.

"Oh no you don't!"

He turned at the voice ringing out behind him. Angela had always had a piercing tone.

She stalked right up to him, black hair swinging over her shoulders, heels clacking loudly in the quiet hallway.

"You are not going to walk off without saying goodbye to me this time" she said, eyes flashing anger at him. She stopped right in front of him, angled her head back to look up at him.

"You are a selfish shit, Tim. You fucking leave me here to deal with all this?"

"Cool it, Angel," he said, grabbing her arm. He turned her toward his sons who were staring on with wide eyes.

"Boys, meet your Auntie Angela."

"Hi," Jay said, hanging back as wary as if Angela might turn on him next.

Angela laughed, pressing a hand against her mouth.

"I don't know if I want to hug you or hit you," she said to Tim, but then she flung her arms around his shoulders, hung on around his neck so tightly he felt his breath choking up in him.

"I am so damn glad you're here," she said into his shirt.

* * *

Sorry this chapter is so late, I had trouble trying to get the back story in. I think I have the next few chapters figured out!


	4. Chapter 4

Tim leaned back against the wall of the elevator as it went down. In the mirror on the wall opposite he could see himself with his boys either side of him.

Since leaving Tulsa he'd filled out with all the hard work and proper meals and years going by. His chin was shadowed from not shaving in two days, his hair shorter than he'd have ever worn it when he was young.

But he could see the boy he used to be in Jay beside him, his lean build and the dark curls against his neck, his pent up energy as he leaned his weight forward on the handrail.

Angela watched them in silence, her eyes dry, expression grim.

Liver failure, the doctor had told them in the hallway outside their mother's room. Tim had been glad when he approached because his sister had released her suffocating hold on his neck, but in the next moment trepidation stirred in him.

He knew the look he was giving them, the calm yet sorrowful look of a doctor treating a dying person. There's nothing more we can do, he would say.

"The tumours in her liver are progressing rapidly," the doctor said.

"Yeah, I think you said that last time," Angela responded, her tone impatient.

The doctor looked over at Tim then.

"So what does that mean?" Tim asked, trying to make him get to the point. Angela never heard a thing she didn't want to hear.

Tim lit a cigarette, glanced over at his boys. Jay was looking from the doctor to Angela, watching and listening. Jesse was staring at the ceiling as if he were bored, but maybe like Tim he only wished to be far away from here.

The doctor cleared his throat, looked back to Angela.

"We're looking at days, maybe a week. There's nothing more we can do. She'll start sleeping more and more."

Those words again. Sometimes life ran out on you.

Tim had tried to close up Curly's wounds with his hands. He remembered blood seeping between his fingers, an irreversible flow. Blood on his clothes, blood soaking into the asphalt. He remembered the numb horror of watching it, kneeling on the cold street, seeing the last spasms of his brother's dying body.

He knew when it was over, just like he knew now it was over.

Angela put her hands on her hips, stood in front of the doctor in the sterile hallway.

"She sleeps all the time anyway. You going to do anything other than drug her up? Tim, got a cigarette?"

Tim lit one from the end of his and passed it to her. She puffed on it, tapped her foot and stared at the doctor.

"If there's anything you have to say to your mother, now is the time," the doctor said in reply. His expression was kind as he looked at her, despite her narrowed eyes, her mouth blowing smoke at him.

"Can you believe that damn doctor?" Angela said in the lift. "You know when we first met him he told us she had a month. That was two months ago."

Her eyes were steely. She watched Tim and his sons.

"They sure do look like you. Little mini Tim's, right?"

She smiled then, the same kind of loss in her expression as Tim had seen on their mother.

"This one ain't so mini now," Tim said, looking at Jay.

"It's just what this world needs, more Shepards," Angela said.

His boys weren't Shepards in the way Tulsa thought of them. Tim was, always would be. He could never change what he had done.

The elevator jerked to a stop. Angela stepped out with them.

"I'll walk you out," she'd said, after the doctor left them in the hallway. "Mom will still be sleeping anyway."

Maybe she just didn't want to be left there with their mother who was going to die. After she did Angela would be all alone, her man in prison, her brother's gone.

"We'll keep her comfortable, she shouldn't be in any pain," the doctor had said.

Curly had held onto Tim's arms as he died, his grip slowly loosening, his gasps slowing. It wasn't the pain his brother felt in his last moments that haunted him, but the fear.

"They got me," Curly said, his words panted out. "They really got me,"

He sounded stunned. They had seen death but still they never believed it would come to them. Not the Shepard boys.

"Who was it?" Tim asked, "Who was it, Curly?"

He used the last moments of his brother's life to demand an answer, to shake his shoulder, to try and find a way to get revenge.

He didn't tell him that he loved him and always would, that he would miss him for the rest of his days. Those were things he didn't understand until the moment after it was all too late.

XXX

"Hey, Jesse, watch this!"

Jay stood on the rocky ledge, outlined against the sky. Below him the pooled water of the swimming hole was dark and rippled.

Tim sat on the banks, sweating in his jeans, drinking coke and wishing it had something stronger in it.

Jay jumped, tucking his knees up toward his chest. Water sprayed up around him as he broke the surface, Jesse turned his face away and laughed as it showered down over him.

Tim had taken them down to the river after they'd left the hospital. He didn't want to go back and sit in the stifling heat of the hotel room; he didn't want to keep driving the streets washed with memories.

Down here he remembered only good days. He remembered him and Curly firing slingshots at trees and old cans, and climbing onto rocks and jumping into the water just like his own sons did.

Jesse climbed up the bank to where his brother had stood, his feet slipping in the water Jay had left. He hung on and hauled himself up. His youngest son had none of the natural athleticism Jay did, only a grim determination to keep up.

"Jay, watch me!" he called down.

But Jay had already turned away, heading back toward the bank where Tim was. Behind him Jesse hit the water with a hollow sounding smack and bounced back up quickly.

He turned to see if Jay was watching, and Tim gave him a little nod to show he was.

Jay dropped down beside Tim and pulled his knees up.

"Look," he said, angling his leg to show Tim a stream of watery blood running down one calf. "Hit a rock going down."

"You should have checked for that before jumping," Tim said, watching Jay wiping away the blood with a thumb. The cut was long and jagged. Blood beaded along it again.

"I did check, must have missed it."

He wiped his thumb against the stones, leaving a dark smear.

"You tell Jesse before he jumped?"

"Man, I knew he wasn't gonna go as deep as I did."

"Jay," Tim said, frustration squeezing in him. "If you know there's a fucking rock where he's about to jump, you tell him. I shouldn't have to say it."

Jay glanced at him then back down at his leg.

"Ok, I should have told him."

He sighed and ran his hand up the trail of blood again.

"Stop that," Tim said, pulling his arm away.

"Dad, I'm bleeding. Not that you give a shit."

Tim stared away, across the glistening water. For days after Curly died he washed his hands, sure he could still see his brother's blood, worked into the lines of his skin, his pores, every fucking part of him. He could still smell it.

He pulled his t shirt off and ripped a strip from around the bottom.

"Here," he said. "Put this around it."

He watched Jesse while Jay nursed his leg. He'd come in from the deep and was pre-occupied with the shallow waters in the rocks.

"Can I have a drink?"

He handed Jay the half finished can of coke.

Jay swigged it and screwed his mouth a little.

"It's warm," he said, but tipped it back for another drink anyway.

Blood showed through in a faint line down the make shift bandage on his leg. It was nothing, just a cut, but the sight of the blood still made his heart jump a beat. He looked away again, irritated at his own reaction. His body betrayed him even if his mind didn't.

"Your sister, Angela, she's kind of ..." Jay paused, left the word hanging.

"Spit it out," Tim said. "I'm sure you won't say nothing I ain't thought already."

"I was going to say scary."

Tim chuckled and shook his head.

"Maybe not then."

He looked at his son. "She's the scared one, understand?"

"About your mom you mean?"

Tim nodded.

"What did you think I was going to say about her?" Jay asked.

"Never mind."

"Your mom can't have long left, huh?"

He was young enough to have the bluntness of a child, old enough to bite his lip and look contrite a second later.

"Sorry, I shouldn't say that."

Tim shrugged. "Don't be sorry, it's the truth."

They were meant to be on the way back to Texas already. Stay one night and do his duty and be gone again. He forgot nothing was ever so simple here. As they left the hospital Angela had told him to come by for dinner later, and he'd agreed before remembering he was supposed to be gone.

As long as his mother and Angela lived his duty to them would never be done.

He reached over to tuck in the loose end of his son's clumsily wrapped bandage.

"You ok?" he asked, like he should have done in the first place.

Jay nodded, smiled. "It's nothing," he said.

XXX

Angela's house on the North Side was long and low with peeling paint and a jumble of discarded toys in the front yard. A teenage boy sat on the wide steps leading down from the porch, smoking and staring at them as Tim got out the car.

The kid didn't look much like a Shepard, being stocky and fair, but Tim remembered Angela once complaining to him how much her oldest son looked like his dad.

Tim walked around bikes and a paddling pool half full of stagnant water on the way to the front door.

The boy still didn't move, blocking the doorway, flicking his ash over the steps.

Tim stopped in front of him. The boy flicked his cigarette away between his thumb and finger to land inches in front of Tim's shoes. Tim moved a foot to step on it as it smouldered on the straggly grass.

"You Tony?" he asked.

The boy moved his head an inch, and Tim guessed it to be affirmative.

"I'm Tim," he said. "Your mom's brother."

"Yeah, I know who you are, I seen your picture," the boy said, not looking excited to be meeting his long gone uncle.

"So you going to move or I got to step through you?" Tim asked, trying not to let his amusement show.

It was the only kind of welcome he should have expected from a nephew of his. He was a Shepard, no matter who his father was. Tony slowly got to his feet and lent back against the side of the house.

"This is Jay and Jesse," Tim said, nodding to his own boys as they came up behind him.

"Hey," Jay greeted, giving his cousin a quick grin as he strolled past him after Tim.

The interior of the house was cool and dimly lit. Angela came up the hallway.

"Well come in," she said, waving a hand at them. "I'm just getting the chicken on."

Tim hoped Angela had improved her cooking some since they were kids. Most of the time a drink and a cigarette were preferable to anything she served up while their mother worked evenings.

"This is Joey," she added, putting an arm around a little kid who sidled up beside her. "He's the baby."

He wasn't much of a baby, five at least, thin and dark haired like Angela. He stepped out from behind her and smiled up at Tim.

"I've got a hot wheels track, want to see it?"

"Alright," Tim said, remembering his own kids at that age. Jay would have been just as trusting. Tim had to teach him wariness, something seeming born in him and Jesse.

Joey led Tim into a room off the hallway. Blankets spilled off the beds, clothes bulged out from draws, and toys were scattered across the floor.

"That's Sean's bed," Joey said, waving a hand at the top bunk. "Here, my daddy it sent to me for my birthday, I'm six now. My daddy's in prison."

He crouched down over an oval track, dug around in the mess beside him until he came up with two plastic cars.

"The red one is the fastest one."

Tim leaned in the doorway watching him position the cars.

"I can race them both at the same time. You know how?"

"Yeah, my kids had one when they were your age."

"Did you buy it for them when you were in prison?"

"Not in prison, just working."

Joey asked as if going to prison was something everyone did. It had seemed the same way to Tim once too, an inevitable passage on the path to manhood.

Tim could hear Angela talking to his boys out in the kitchen, getting them drinks. He should get back in there before she started running her mouth, before Jay got to asking questions. He didn't want them thinking they had licence to do any of the shit he used to.

"My mom has your photo in her bedroom. You and my uncle Curly, but he's dead. Sometimes we go to his grave and we put flowers there and my mom cries. Ok, you watching?"

"Ready," he said, and the cars started up, the high whining sound of them racing around the track filling up his head. He remembered standing over the empty grave with Jay, the baby crying in the cold.

Two months later he left Darren Walker to live, to never have to answer for what he had done. It was the moment he chose his son above all others, above his gang, his mother and sister, above justice for his brother.

He put down his knife down on the concrete floor of the bathroom outside a bar where the River King's drank. He backed away; he went home to his son.

* * *

Sorry for the slow update and thanks for reading and reviewing. I first planned this story to be 4 chapters long, but I am not done ... Tim has too many issues to deal with in only 4 chapters!


	5. Chapter 5

Disclaimer: S E Hinton owns The Outsiders

* * *

Tim smoked as he stood on Angela's back porch. From inside he could hear the clatter of dishes as she served up ice cream to the younger kids.

Dinner had been good after all, fried chicken and coleslaw, baked potatoes.

"Thought I'd poison you didn't you?" Angela said when he commented. "I've learnt a thing or two since those days."

Afterward Jay and Tony had headed down to his bedroom. Tony had nudged Jay and mouthed 'show you something' and Jay had followed him out the room.

Tim watched sheets flapping down on the line, white against the dark sky, thinking for a moment on his oldest nephew.

He'd hardly said two words during dinner, sitting in sullen silence and glaring at Tim like he hoped he'd choke on it.

Maybe he had a girly magazine down in his room. Cigarettes pinched from his mother. A fancy switchblade. Tim didn't care about those things, but Tony reminded him too much of the lost boys he used to know.

The door opened behind him and Angela came out, grabbed his cigarettes and helped herself to one.

"Well they're happy," she said. "Superman's on TV."

Tim turned to glance through the window into the lounge. Jesse and Angela's youngest three were lined up on the couch, bowls balanced on their laps.

"What are Jay and Tony doing?"

"Hell if I know. Whatever teenage boys do, you should know."

"My boy better not do the shit I used to."

"I wish mine wouldn't," she said, sitting down on the top step and lighting up.

"So don't let him. My boys don't take one step outside without my say so."

"That's real nice for you. Tony would laugh and walk right past me if I told him he wasn't allowed out."

"You got to get tough, Angel."

She snorted. "Listen to you. Still think you can tell us all how to run our lives, huh?"

Tim drained the rest of his beer and didn't reply. He supposed he deserved that. It must be hard for his sister, raising four kids on her own, living in the same place she grew up where no one ever forgot your sins.

He was the one who could walk away, but Angela was shackled as surely as her husband in prison.

"How long is your old man gone?" he asked her.

"Been four, he got another three to go. He really got himself into it this time, I think the judge got sick of seeing him standing up there and threw the book at him."

She looked pissed off, but at the judge or her no good husband Tim wasn't sure.

"And if your thinking he'd keep Tony out of trouble, think again," she added. "First time Tony got nicked for stealing he thought it was a big joke. Said crime was in his blood."

Tim dropped the end of his cigarette into the empty beer bottle. He remembered Angela's wedding day. She'd been only sixteen, her face set in resolution, wearing an old dress of their mothers.

Tim had grabbed Christopher Ward's arm as they stood before the priest, yanked him close and said low by his ear, "You better not fuck this up."

He wasn't any wiser than the rest of them, an arrogant boy who thought he could turn the world the way he wanted it.

"You go and visit him?"

"Every couple of months. I don't take the kids much though. I don't want them getting used to going in to prison."

"They miss him?"

Tim's own father had been gone so long he wasn't even a real memory, just a black and white photo his mother had given him and he kept for some reason.

"They hardly know him, even when he was out he was gone most of the time. Tony feels it the most I guess. He say's he hates him, but he's just hurting."

Tim didn't offer more words of advice. Angela's son towered over her, he thought he was a man. She was right, he couldn't tell her what to do with him.

"I'll talk to him if you want," he said instead.

She laughed, flicking her cigarette away and getting up from the step.

"Don't bother, he hates you."

Tim stood up to open the door for her.

"Must be in the blood," he said.

xxx

Another morning in Tulsa. The sun glinted off the windows of high rise buildings. Tim shouldn't have been here still but he was, smoking out on the balcony of the hotel room.

He'd gone down to the bar where Sylvia worked again after the boys went to bed, gone just to get a drink. Something to blur out the memories turning inside that were still fresh underneath.

He flicked the cigarette away and went in to make another coffee. Jay was sitting up on the edge of the bed in the gloomy light of the curtained room.

Tim ruffled his already messy hair as he passed.

"You're awake early."

"He keeps kicking me," Jay said, glancing at his sleeping brother. "If you plan on staying any longer can we swap? He's a pain in the ass to sleep with."

Tim poured out water into a mug and ignored his sons gripes.

"Dad," Jay whined, following him out to the balcony.

Tim lit up again and swigged the coffee.

"What?"

"How long are we staying here? I'm all out of clean clothes, you only told us to pack for a night."

Jay boosted himself up on the railing, sitting on the narrow ledge. He was barefoot and shirtless, his back to the drop below him.

"I'll drop a load off at the laundry," Tim said. "We're leaving tomorrow."

Just like that the commitment was made to stay another day. Before he'd had time to think it through. This place was a like a noose pulling tighter.

"When, morning?"

"Yeah. Why, you missing school?"

Jay rolled his eyes. "You know it ain't maths I go to school for."

Sometimes Tim remembered being fourteen all too well. His son's girlfriend was all breasts and legs and golden hair, a wide smile and hard eyes. She wore her skirts so short Tim wanted to tell her to put some more clothes on when she came over.

"Let me guess, girls, lunch, and football."

"You even got the order right," Jay said.

Tim wasn't sure how he ended up with a sports loving kid like Jay. All he ever cared for was fighting and running fast.

Tim tapped out another cigarette. The sun was behind Jay, his figure dark against it.

"You and Connie," he said. "Must be about two months now?"

"Yeah, what about it?" Jay asked, looking wary.

Tim stalled lighting his cigarette. Bringing up sex with his teenage son was a whole different conversation to joking around with the guys at work.

"If you need condoms you can ask me."

Jay gave a choked sounding laugh.

"I'm fourteen!"

It was old enough. Tim remembered his first time, up in a room at Buck's with a girl of seventeen to his fourteen. He almost smiled at the memory, then yanked his mind back to the present.

"So was I once."

"Shit, we ain't even done it," Jay said. "She thinks it's a sin and all. She's Catholic."

"Really?"

Jay looked more embarrassed than when Tim thought he was having sex.

"I was surprised too," he said.

The Catholic girls Tim had known weren't so worried about sinning. Maybe a different breed of girl hung out with a hood like him.

"Well, just remember what I said anyway."

Jay nodded and jumped down off the railing. Tim relaxed an arm he hadn't even realized was tensed, ready to grab his son if he slipped.

xxx

Rita Shepard slept. Tim sat beside his mother's bed and watched the fluid dripping steadily into her veins, he watched clouds move across the sky out the window.

She looked as near death as she had the day before, until she woke up. Her waited for her to wake up.

He gave Jay and Jesse money to go down to the shop on the ground floor. They came back with soft drinks and snacks and cards.

Tim smoked at the window, watched the boys playing twenty one with peanut chits.

A nurse came in and replaced the bag of fluid.

"How's she doing?" Tim asked her.

The nurse pressed her fingers against his mother's limp wrist, feeling the pulse. She wrote something down on the chart at the end of the bed.

"She's holding on," she said to Tim.

Tim left without her having woken up. He stood over her, thinking of what the nurse had told him. "Talk to her, she can hear you."

All the words left unsaid through all the years were a tangle inside him. There was no beginning to them.

"Bye, mom," he said.

xxx

The bar and grill where Angela worked was busy on a Monday evening. Angela worked the bar, he could see her through the windowed double doors as he sat in the dining area.

"Bring the boys down for dinner, I'll give you family rates," she had said.

Tim drank a beer and watched the street outside while they waited for the food to arrive. The dining area was packed with families, through in the bar area he could see only a glimpse of men walking back and forwards to the bar, his sister pulling beers.

Tim lit up a cigarette, he eyed a man who had come through the door, glanced around the room then started toward him.

The man grinned when Tim looked at him. Held his hand out as he came up to him.

Tim waited for recognition to come to him, scrambled back through his memories for a youthful face to match the man. He was tall and solidly built, red haired.

"Tim Shepard," the man said, looking at Tim as if he were seeing a ghost. "I heard a rumor you was back here but I wouldn't believe it if I wasn't looking at you."

"I'm just here a few days," Tim said. He hated making conversation not knowing who this guy was.

"Paula, my wife, she was talking to Darry's wife Julie and she saw Angela at the grocery store and she said she was cooking dinner for her brother."

Tim tried to catch up to the rapid fire of names. Darry he remembered, the oldest of the orphaned brothers. He remembered Angela had told him one of the Curtis boys died in Vietnam.

"Two-Bit," he said, the name from the past falling into place. "How you doing?"

"Good, good," Two Bit said. "Well married now, but besides that."

He laughed, looked at Jay and Jesse.

"Guess you got the virus too."

"Divorced, actually," Tim said.

"Shit, too bad."

"Nah, it's not bad at all," Tim said, leaning back in his chair.

Two Bit chuckled. "Shit, your two are grown up. How old is he?"

He nodded his head at Jay, who was chewing on his straw and looking disinterested in listening to talk of marriage and babies.

"Fourteen," Tim said.

"He like his old man?" Two Bit asked, grinning.

"Nope," Tim said shortly. "I make sure of that."

"Yeah, guess he wouldn't get much past you," Two Bit said, looking at him like he was someone he wasn't sure he remembered after all.

"Hey," he added. "Darry and a few other guys are coming by a bit later. You should come in the bar, have a drink with us. Leave the kids to have their coke."

He grinned at Jay, but Jay was busy looking out the window at a group of giggling schoolgirls waiting to cross the road.

"Yeah, maybe," Tim said. "We got an early start tomorrow."

He didn't care to reminisce about those old days, not with them. There were too many dead.

"Bet they'd be surprised to see you. Who'd have thought man, always figured you dead or jailed by now."

"Nah, neither got me," Tim said. He wished Two Bit would leave him alone.

"Shit, I remember once you up at Buck's selling bags of grass when the fuzz turned up, Curly ran out and flushed 'em down the toilet!"

Tim could just about feel Jay's attention snap to the conversation.

"Sounds like you did a bit more than play pool, dad," he said.

Tim looked at his boy.

"Never said I was a saint," he told him.

Jay didn't respond, but Tim could see the questions that were coming as soon as Two Bit walked away.

Two Bit looked between them, slightly bemused.

"You got any kids?" Tim asked him.

"Nah, can you tell?"

He shrugged, looking a little apologetic.

A waitress came over balancing plates of food and Two Bit shuffled aside so she could put them down.

"I'll leave you to it,"he said. "Come in the bar when your done, I'll buy you a drink."

"Yeah, alright," Tim said without much commitment.

He picked up a fork and prodded his burnt looking steak.

"Well if you get bored you can bounce this off the walls," he commented to his sons.

Jesse smiled, but Jay sat with his meal untouched in front of him, his gaze full of curiosity.

"You sold what?" he asked.

* * *

Sorry for being so slow at updating! Thanks for still reading.


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